The mistake the Lakers made with Mike D’Antoni was hiring him in the first place.

Jim and Jerry Buss — the hiring was one of the last things the late, great Lakers owner consulted on — have longed for a return to “Showtime” when winning and entertainment went hand-in-hand. They won titles with Phil Jackson, but it wasn’t the same. They saw D’Antoni as a potential path back to the best of both worlds, back to the best of times.

Instead, the Lakers got the worst of times.

However, there is a lesson in what the Lakers did wrong, and before them what the Knicks did wrong with D’Antoni, one that can help future teams thinking of hiring him as their coach:

Mike D’Antoni can win in this league as a coach — but you have to FULLY commit to building his kind of team.

The Lakers were never a good fit. First, D’Antoni was hired 10-games into a season where he was a 180 degree spin from Mike Brown, yet he had no training camp to figure things out. Pau Gasol is not a stretch four who wants to run to the arc in transition, he’s a skilled post player. Kobe Bryant circa 2004 would have been brilliant in a D’Antoni system, but the 2014 Kobe is a post/elbow player who needs to operate in a slowed down half-court system to thrive. Steve Nash’s mind is willing but his flesh is weak.

Then there is Dwight Howard — he could be a great fit as a D’Antoni big man, because he is quick and fantastic as the roll man. Dwight Howard chooses not to be. He demands the ball in the post. In a D’Antoni system where “the ball needs energy” and has to move Howard causes it to stick and the offense to stall.

Add into this that dynamic that D’Antoni is simply not a good communicator with his players and it all collapsed. (As for the 2015 Lakers, D’Antoni did as much as anyone could have with that injury-riddled, odd-fitting roster. No coach dead or alive could have made the playoffs with that group.)

What happened in Los Angeles was an accelerated version of what happened to D’Antoni in New York — they hired him to save the franchise, then after missing out on LeBron James they brought in Amar’e Stoudemire and paired him with Raymond Felton as the point guard and Danilo Gallinari as a stretch four… and it worked okay. The Knicks were improved, entertaining and on their way to being a playoff team.

Then James Dolan gutted the roster of athletes to bring in the ball stopper that is Carmelo Anthony. Everything fell apart (save for a couple weeks of Linsanity when Anthony was out injured). D’Antoni was doomed as a future coach.

Mike D’Antoni is not flexible — team’s can’t bring him in and expect him to dramatically modify what he does to fit the pieces they already have. D’Antoni needs to win his way, to prove that what he does works and works well.

And it does work. Despite what some Lakers and Knicks fans think.Phoenix was not a fluke. Watch the Miami Heat play and you see a whole lot of D’Antoni offense. None other than Gregg Popovich admits stealing things from D’Antoni. Those teams do some things differently (a focus on defense is higher on the priority list, for one) but they are indebted to D’Antoni.

Eventually some other team is going to give D’Antoni a shot (the NBA is all about recycling coaches). That’s fine. Someone should give him a real shot.

Jim Buss knows who the Lakers bring in as a head coach is a defining hire for his legacy as the owner of the Lakers. In his first moves he has tried to make bold strokes to return the Lakers to championship status — trade for Dwight Howard, hire Mike D’Antoni (who has now resigned) — but nobody thought the chemistry through well and it all blew up.

Now the Lakers are hitting a reset and rebuilding, and Buss knows he has to get this one right. The coach, the draft pick, all of it. So the Lakers are going to go slow and cast a very wide net to find a new coach — they are going to talk to everybody.

Ideally that will include Tom Thibodeau, reports Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com.

The Lakers plan to reach out to the Chicago Bulls for permission to interview Tom Thibodeau, a league source tells http://t.co/8DsJGhr2Pi

Thibs is who Kobe Bryant wants, and it is an open secret around the league that there is friction between the Bulls coach and that team’s GM Gar Forman.

But do you really see Thibodeau jumping from a Bulls’ team he has built in his image and one — with a good power forward who can score and a healthy Derrick Rose — that is a title contender, to take on a rebuilding project in Los Angeles? Thibodeau signed an extension recently, the Bulls may well not even give permission.

Thibodeau is a big name but far from the only one to leak out as to be interviewed. Here are some others via Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times and Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com.

I have written about some of the more name candidates in detail, but that list was maybe half (or less) of who gets interviewed.

This is a wide-open search, although my sources have said to keep an eye on Byron Scott — he is a former Laker, part of the family, has coached the Nets to the NBA Finals twice and is a Buss family favorite. He’s far from a lock, but he’s someone to watch.

CHARLOTTE — The man sitting at the end of the bench knows he is not going to play. The warm-up jacket and pants will not come off. So he just sits, plaintive look on his face, and he watches with an expression that almost never changed. His long legs stretch out almost into the court. Every now and again, someone in the stands will point at him.

“That guy,” a friend will say to a friend or a parent will say to a child, “was once the first pick in the NBA Draft. He was going to be the next big star.”

Yes, Greg Oden was the first pick in the NBA Draft. Yes, he was going to be the game’s next big star. Yes, he had everything — size, strength, balance, a defensive presence, a sense of the game. Yes, yes, yes, he was all those things, his future was unlimited … but that was many injuries ago. MANY injuries ago. Nostalgia and regret often mingle.

Now he sits here on the end of the bench. Sure, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has told him to be ready to get in there, that all players must be ready if the Heat is going to repeat as champions again. Oden doesn’t say much but he says he will stay ready.

He also knows that LeBron James continuously makes the point that the team’s depth — and specifically having Greg Oden on that bench — will play a huge role in these playoffs at some point. Oden says he will be prepared for the moment.

Greg Oden also knows that he is not going to play.

Sometimes there is nothing left to say except life is unfair.

* * *

Let’s start with the end because it is easier to pinpoint. We know the exact date. The end for the Greg Oden experiment came on March 26, 2014. That was the day that every hope and illusion about this latest comeback shattered.

Everybody wanted that comeback. For him. He deserved it. Oden had missed almost four years of basketball when Miami signed him for the minimum before the season began. He deserved good things.

And this looked like a good setup. Nobody expected Greg Oden to suddenly be the superstar everyone expected six or seven years ago. But, in the least, he looked like potential Kryptonite for Indiana’s big man Roy Hibbert. You will remember that last year the Heat had a ferocious seven-game series with Indiana and they could do nothing at all with Hibbert, who averaged 22 points and 10 boards for the series. It didn’t matter what Spoelstra tried, the Heat did not have a Hibbert answer.

Well Greg Oden is a 7-footer, 250-plus pounds, he could pound on Hibbert and weigh on him and foul him and frustrate him. Sure, if Oden recaptured some of his lost talent, everyone would cheer. But, at the least, he could slow Hibbert.

That dream ended on March 26. The Heat had slowly worked Oden into the lineup. From the start of the new year, they put him in a few games for five- and six-minute stretches just to get him some time on the court. Ten days before the big game against Indiana, they put him in the starting lineup. He flashed a few positive signs. He scored six, grabbed three rebounds, blocked a couple of shots at Cleveland. He made both his shots and blocked two more against Memphis.

And on March 26, he started against Indiana — a homecoming for Oden, who went to High School in Indianapolis. Everyone was watching this time. And … lets just say it did not go well. If it had been a fight, they would have stopped it. Well, in truth, they did stop it. Hibbert did everything he wanted for six minutes, Oden was utterly helpless, and after six minutes Spoelstra could not watch anymore. He pulled Oden and did not put him back in … for three weeks.

In fact, Oden has played in just one game since the end — 13 uninspired minutes in an entirely meaningless game against a putrid Philadelphia team. He has not played again. The official explanation for Oden’s disappearance was that he has had “back spasms.” He undoubtedly has had back spasms. But …

“Terrible,” Oden told reporters after the Hibbert game. He knew. He was heartbroken. This haunted pro basketball career of his just won’t ever let Greg Oden breathe.

* * *

In the beginning, Greg Oden was the franchise. He was the next in line of dominant NBA centers after Dwight Howard, Tim Duncan and Shaq. He was big, he was strong, he was balanced, he worked hard, he blocked shots, he was the man. When you asked around the NBA about the first pick in the 2007 draft — the choice being manchild Greg Oden or scoring machine Kevin Durant — about seven out of 10 said Oden.

Why Oden? Well, some thought he was a SAFER pick. Durant was viewed as a one-dimensional scorer. Oden had a bigger game.

Some thought he was the WISER pick because he had already filled out. People forget: Durant made news shortly before the draft because he couldn’t bench-press all seven Harry Potter books (actually it was 185 pounds he couldn’t press) and scouts could just imagine him getting backed all the way down to the beer concession stand. Oden meanwhile looked like he was 10 years older than his age, even as a freshman he looked like a man going back and playing with the college kids, and there was no need to imagine who he would become.

And some though he was a BETTER pick than Durant because great centers tend to lead teams to championships while great scoring forwards often do not.

Of course, there were counterarguments; there were some people who passionately believed Durant was the right choice. But in the end, Portland did what most teams would have done with the first pick and took Oden. There was some irony here; Portland brought a special history to the draft having already taken an injury-prone center (Sam Bowie) over a college super-scorer (Michael Jordan) and had never quite lived that down. But, hey, that could not happen again, right?

Before Oden played his first NBA game, he had microfracture surgery on his right knee. Before his first game. He missed the entire 2007-08 season. While Durant poured in points his rookie year, the Bowie-Jordan comparison was being made ad nauseam.

It should be noted: The story was certainly not in stone yet. It was just one injury, and one thing that Portland loved about Oden was his dedication and work ethic. Before he entered his surgery, he reportedly told Portland GM Kevin Pritchard again and again how sorry he was for letting the team down and how desperate he was to come back. “We picked the right kid,” Pritchard told reporters after that surgery. “He cares about this organization.”

Oden came back in 2008. In his first game – HIS FIRST GAME – Andrew Bynum landed on his foot and he missed two weeks. But then Oden started to show the promise. In his fifth NBA game, he scored 22, grabbed 10 boards, blocked two shots. He became a starter in Game 9, and while he was inconsistent — rookies will be inconsistent — he had bright moments. He grabbed 13 boards against Detroit. He had a double-double at Washington. Fifteen rebounds against the Clippers. Sixteen points 10 boards against Toronto.

On January 12, he went to Chicago and dominated — 17 points, 13 rebounds. Milwaukee couldn’t stop him — 24 points, 15 rebounds. He blocked six shots against the Knicks. Yes, finally, it was coming together.

And then, just as he started to feel good, he bumped knees with Corey Maggette. This time he cracked the patella in his left knee. He was out for more than a month. But the bigger problem was that he now had some trouble with BOTH knees. And that, any big man will tell you, is a bad, bad sign.

In December of the next season, Oden fractured his left patella. Everyone said it had nothing to do with the earlier injury but, at this point, it didn’t matter. The guy just could not stay healthy. He was out for another season. Oden announced that this time he wasn’t coming back until he was ready, until he was fully healthy and ready to deliver on his promise.

One year later, instead, he announced that he was having microfracture surgery on his left knee. That put him out for another year.

The next year, he ha a couple more knee surgeries, putting him out for another year.

Then he said he needed a year to recover and be fully healthy.

When the Miami Heat signed him before this season, he had played in just 82 games in five years. He worked insanely hard to come back, time after time, he didn’t deserve all those setbacks. But, as the line in Unforgiven goes, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” And you know the end already.

* * *

Two or three weeks ago, people were openly questioning the Heat — they were playing pretty lousy. But in the NBA, nothing really matters until the playoffs and the Heat was the only team to sweep its opening round series. The champs suddenly look healthy and rested and they are enjoying watching the best teams in the East flounder and their own path open up.

Miami not only looks healthy now, it looks overstocked. The end of the Heat bench is loaded with guys you know even if you are only a mild NBA fan. There’s Shane Battier, the 35-year-old defensive specialist who has played a huge role in the Heat’s previous two championships. There’s Udonis Haslem, another major player in the championship runs, who every now and again goes into games and cannot be stopped. There’s Rashard Lewis, once one of the top scorers in the NBA.

The truth is, the Heat can’t use them all. The NBA is a game of match-ups, a game of rhythm, and Erik Spoelstra is not bluffing when he says he needs everyone to be ready. There could come a moment for any of them.

But … probably not for Greg Oden. For one thing, the man he was probably brought in to stop — Roy Hibbert — is in the middle of a nightmare playoffs and his Pacers could get eliminated as early as Thursday. For another, Oden’s body just won’t let him be the player he might have been. He’s just 26, but his knees are 50, and while Kevin Durant will probably win the MVP Award this year, Greg Oden will probably not leave the Miami bench.

Oden says he will keep waiting though. He says he has not lost hope. That might be the most miraculous part of all.

D’Antoni was dealt a bad hand in roster quality, even though a Steve Nash-Kobe Bryant-Pau Gasol-Dwight Howard core once seemed so promising. Those players just never stayed healthy (or, in Howard’s case, in Los Angeles) long enough to thrive.

It’s impossible to know how D’Antoni would have done with a better roster – and more support.